Another Top Ten Most Dramatic Tohoku Tsunami Videos

Today is the one-year anniversary of the Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan. In commemoration of this tragic yet fascinating event I do hereby share with you my readers another batch of tsunami videos that have come to my attention that I view as being extraordinary. For additional dramatic videos of this event please visit my column Top Ten Most Dramatic Tohoku Tsunami Videos.



This video was shot by a boy safely perched on a bluff overlooking his town and shows the city of Minamisanriku being destroyed and about 9,000 of its residents killed right along with it.


This video features two young men laughing and giggling for much of the length of it which seems so very inappropriate but they are silences by the end of it as it becomes clear the event is not all fun and games. We also see the rare occurrence of tsunami breaking waves first outside the breakwater and then slamming into the nearby buildings and essentially destroying everything in sight except for two larger buildings.



This video features a rapidly-rising black-water tsunami tearing a port sector of a city apart and destroy it before the view of the camera. The sounds of the destruction are particularly harsh in this footage.



This footage features the initial bore making its way down a main thoroughfare as viewed from the roof of a three or four story building which is why the video was able to be taken as the tsunami soon is watching over the roofs of one-story buildings and much of the adjacent neighborhood rapidly disappears.



This video basically shows us destruction of the city of Otsuchi-cho in Iwate Prefecture. The camera person is upon on a hillside overlooking town. In view is the tsunami not so much rising rapidly and starting to dismantle and/or float structures away as in most images of this catastrophe but in this case acting as a battering ram and literally crashing into buildings at a great height and forward speed and essentially blowing them up and rapidly overrunning the city.



This video was shot by one young girl in a group of young girls on a hillside watching their town destroyed before them. They appear to be all alone in regards to adult supervision so it seems they realize they are watching the deaths of their parents and siblings and their entire town. Consequently, one hears much hauntingly mournful and pitiful sobbing and wailing from the girls.


This video is over half an hour long and shows the tsunami come and and go three times in a protected harbor milieu. The second to last time there is a backwash it appears briefly that one is about to see some exposed deeper offshore ocean bed before suddenly the ocean rushes right back into the harbor and over the breakwaters.



This video shows the tsunami entering a bay community and initially overtopping breakwaters across the bay. The camaera person is with other evacuated residents of a neighborhood seemingly-protected by a tsunami wall. There is even heard some giggling as people appear to to feel safe. Soon enough frothy black tsunami waves overtop the wall and in a matter of minutes the neighborhood is utterly destroyed as the residents watch.



This is the best aerial perspective footage yet showing the best sense of the large scale of tsunami waves and surges as viewed from a military helicopter following the tsunami as it rushes into a port city and inundates it. Also seen are other inundated shore facilities further up the coast within the same bay.



This video shows a rare glimpse of tsunami breaking waves approaching a rocky shoreline and then striking some breakwaters and overtopping them en route into a protected harbor that is suddenly naked to the angry ocean which proceeds to destroys boats in view of the camera.